This mural contrasts two aspects of Eastwood life, illustrating two quotes from Lawrence's writing. On the left is a mining scene: 'there was a sort of inner darkness like the gloss of coal in which we moved and had our being.' This is taken from the essay 'Nottingham and the Mining Country' (1930). The right-hand panel is captioned: 'the east was tender with a magenta flush under which the land lay still and rich...', a quotation from Sons and Lovers (1913).
The underground scene shows a group of miners in a remarkably spacious tunnel; contemporary accounts speak of far more cramped conditions in most local pits. The illustration of the family out for a walk seems even more bizarre: not only is the sky pale blue rather than magenta, but the quote is from a scene in the novel when Miriam and Paul are walking alone.
In its current position it is unseen by most visitors to the town. It would be interesting to know who painted the mural, and under what circumstances?
In Nottingham, that dismal town
where I went to school and college
They've built a new university
for a new dispensation of knowledge
Built it most grand and cakeily
out of the noble loot
derived from shrewd cash-chemistry
by good Sir Jesse Boot
This is not Lawrence's finest poem, but it does reveal the extent of his quarrel with the University of Nottingham, as it was written many years after he had left the University College, as it was then. His hostility may have been partly due to his disillusion with the standard of teaching he experienced there in 1906.
But this seems especially ironic today, since not only has the university provided a home for the only statue of Lawrence in the world (as far as I know), but also hosts the DH Lawrence Research Centre, the DH Lawrence Pavilion, and helps to support the DH Lawrence Heritage Centre in Eastwood. Most would consider that this repays anything that the university owes to one of its most renown students.
The statue can be found outside the east entrance to the Law and Social Science building.
